The Galaxy S25 series will only have Qualcomm processors. Samsung will forgo using its Exynos on the base models due to the poor efficiency of the production process.
Samsung Semiconductor is struggling with the 3nm node, so much so that, according to some, it has decided to focus directly on 2nm because the battle on the node currently in use is already lost. With the risk, for the production of Exynos, of having to rely on TSMC. According to rumors coming from Korea, the yield of Samsung’s 3nm node would be 25%, too low for mass production: Exynos will have to wait.
For this reason, for the first time, the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, this will be the name of the processor, will be used on the entire S25 series, from the models to the Ultra model.
Obviously, this is not a recent decision; Samsung knew about it last year and had already made its decision: the presence at the Snapdragon Summit of TM Roh, the boss of Samsung smartphones, was symbolic, almost as if to put his signature on a partnership that has lasted for years. During the Snapdragon Summit, Cristiano Amon, President of Qualcomm, had also shown the performance of the version for the Galaxy of the Snapdragon 8 Elite, with a very slight increase due to the higher clock frequency.
With the arrival of AI, Samsung’s choice to have a single platform on board makes perfect sense: Galaxy AI uses a mix of local models (Gauss and Gemini Nano) and cloud models, and having two different processors to manage also means having to standardize the performance of the faster processor to that of the slower processor.
We have seen it in all these years when Europe was destined for the version with the Exynos on board, improved many times in the latest versions but still unable to keep up with Qualcomm on some modules, see the ISP.